Amazon US and Best Buy USA are currently offering $50 off the Oculus Rift+Touch bundle, bringing the price from $399 to $349. The offer was part of Best Buy’s Black Friday lineup, but is available today. A few hours after the Best Buy deal went up, Amazon price matched it.

This is not the first time Amazon & Best Buy have offered this kind of sale. Last year, the retailers each offered the exact same deal at Black Friday, then again during the week before Christmas.

The package contains the headset, Touch controllers, 2 sensors, and relevant cables. It should be noted however that this does not contain Marvel Powers United VR, which is currently bundled with the Rift from many retailers (at $399). Since the game is worth $40, this deal still works out as better value, but only by $10. If you aren’t interested in that game though, you still save $50.

It looks like location-based VR company Hologate is teasing a new Angry Birds installation.

The company this week took to Facebook to post a teaser image (above) for an announcement due at IAAPA 2018 next week. It shows a bird egg cracking with a VR headset fitted on top and a red feather protruding from the side. Most tellingly, though, you can see mention of original Angry Birds creator, Rovio, in the bottom right of the picture.

“The tension is building and soon we’ll be able to share more,” the company wrote on the post. “We know it’ll be a hit!”

All signs suggest that this will be a new location-based Angry Birds VR game, then. The series just made its move into AR with a Magic Leap One title developed by Resolution Games and, a few years back, there was evidence of a Gear VR-based game too, though it never materialized.

Hologate, meanwhile, has an elaborate four-player VR set up that gives each player their own space to walk around in. We went hands-on with the system and a four-player Beat Saber clone named Holobeat at Gamescom this year.

The long-awaited release date for the PSVR version of Beat Saber was announced today, alongside some exclusive content for the new version of the VR hit. Unsurprisingly, the news was not met with much enthusiasm from those that aren’t getting the game on Sony’s headset.

The comments replying to Beat Saber’s tweet announcing the November 20th release date are filled with people upset about the PSVR-only features, which include a new campaign and five new songs. “Exclusive content really?” one fan wrote. “When the game is still in Early Access on Steam and we haven’t seen an update in months? Not cool”

“exclusive content? disappointing,” another wrote. “pc beatsaber has been carried by modders and mappers for months. literally carrying this game…. we have had 1 song added since release and it was mediocre. very disappointing.”

As such the team at Beat Games quickly set about explaining why the PSVR version is getting new content. The team’s Jan Ilavsky said that the developer wanted to give PSVR players “something new” as they had to wait longer.

Sure. But we wanted to give them something new, because they had to wait much longer then PC guys. Also adding new things to all platforms at the same time is not so easy.

— Jan “Split” Ilavsky (@Split82) November 8, 2018

Meanwhile, CEO Jaroslav Beck teased that there will be another announcement specifically on the PC side soon.

Hi man, there will be an announcement for PC community soon too.. 😉 Don’t worry. We’re doing what we can and as fast as we can.

— Jaroslav Beck (@Sqeepo) November 8, 2018

Finally, the official Beat Saber account promised that a deeper explanation was on the way. We’ll be sure to update you when that arrives.

Jewels, you are great and we luv you! We are gonna explain the situation as clear as possible as it might be a bit confusing for the community at the moment.

— Beat Saber (@BeatSaber) November 8, 2018

Whilst PSVR’s Beat Saber will have exclusive content, we’re also not expecting it to get some features currently in development for PC, like a track editor. It remains to be seen if either platform’s exclusive content could cross over later down the line.

If there’s one thing that everyone loves about going to the movies to watch the latest Pixar film, it’s got to be the shorts. These mini-movies that appear before the main feature are often filled with as much love, laughs and innovation as the film they’re shown in front of. Madrid Noir: Prologue brings those fuzzy feelings into a VR headset.

Produced by No Ghost and directed by James Castillo, Madrid Noir was awarded the Best Debut VR Experience prize at this year’s Raindance Film Festival, and it’s easy to see why. Though it offers only a taste of what will hopefully be a more fleshed out experience, I was utterly charmed by its short story, which introduces us to a private investigator named Manolo and his reluctantly-adopted dog, Paquita.

Madrid Noir Prologue – Teaser from No Ghost on Vimeo.

Speaking to UploadVR, No Ghost’s Lawrence Bennett explained that the film had be devised as a love letter to Castillo’s hometown of Madrid. “As a good friend of the studio James bought the character concepts and story pitch to No Ghost and we immediately fell in love with them,” Bennett said. “Having a shared background in animation we wanted to create something that featured high end and expressive character animation that could communicate the story without the need for narration or character voicing.”

And the Prologue is indeed expressive. Set in the lull of early evening, Manolo treks his way back to his apartment, berated by Paquita, who simply wants to play ball, at every turn. The detective’s weary eyes tell you all you need to know about the kind of day he’s had, as does his slumped body language. You can’t help but wince as Paquita starts to push his buttons as he drags himself around a 360-degree stage, which is beautifully realized as a virtual theater production.

I also can’t help but notice just how easy Madrid Noir is on the eyes. A mix of vibrant colors bring both scenes and characters to life with welcoming warmth. “No Ghost has a bit of a historical obsession with mixing 2D and 3D styles, and Madrid Noir was a perfect platform for that,” Bennett adds. “Creating shaders that appear hand painted and mixing them with realistic and volumetric lighting was key to realising this look.”

This is a VR production, though, and naturally I’m interested to hear what Bennett thinks the platform brings to the piece. “We had a simple story in our hands, and we felt that if we made it in 2D we wouldn’t be able to create such a strong relationship between the characters and the audience,” he explained. “Because you exist in the same world that they exist, anything that happens to them happens to you too and that’s a very special thing that VR can do that no other medium can.”

Rewatching the brief clip above, it’s certainly true that Madrid Noir has a more immediate impact in VR, though I’d like to see it go deeper. It’s fascinating to watch these characters come to life, but

Well, if nothing else, VR may one day be remembered as the platform used to tease Bloodborne 2.

Fans think that an easter egg found in From Software’s new PSVR exclusive game, Deracine, is, in fact, a hint about a possible sequel to its other PlayStation-published series, Bloodborne.

A doll next to Rozsa’s bed early on in the game can be seen doing the ‘Make Contact’ gesture that players can perform in the action RPG. Pick it up and hit the description button and you’ll get a paragraph that reads:

“A doll of the stone girl Fiona, who appears in the unfinished tale. When a person has a bad dream, Fiona appears and helps them flee.”

Fiona might not be a name we’re familiar with (though, notably, the NPC character used to level up in Bloodborne was a nameless female doll), but the mention of an ‘unfinished tale’ might suggest that Bloodborne 2 is on the way. From Software currently has Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice in the works, but it’s more than possible that a sequel to its PS4 hit is also on the way.

If true, it’s a pretty cool way to hint at a sequel, though we say Deracine itself is very much worth playing in its own right.

That said, we highly doubt any such sequel would offer VR support, though From producer Atsuo Yoshimura did once say he’d like to see another of the developer’s series, Dark Souls, come to VR. We can but keep dreaming for now.

The game is set to arrive on Sony’s headset on November 20th. It’s going to feature a PSVR-exclusive campaign, five new and exclusive songs and a practice mode.

Beat Saber has a release date! The #PSVR rhythm game arrives on 20th November and brings a PS4-exclusive campaign, new songs, modifiers and more: https://t.co/dEq5Y0a8lR pic.twitter.com/sE9WmmEGAa

— PlayStation Europe (@PlayStationEU) November 8, 2018

Beat Saber is an action rhythm game of sorts in which the player wields two wannabe lightsabers. You pick a track and then slash notes corresponding to the color of your saber that arrive in time with the beat. The game’s proved to be something of a hit for the VR industry, selling over 100,000 copies in less than a month.

Need more Beat Saber? Be sure to check out our guide on installing custom songs.

Shasta Ventures is leading a round of investment in Seattle-based BigBox VR, the makers of Smashbox Arena and the upcoming battle royale game POPULATION: ONE.

The $5 million round includes additional funding from GSR Ventures and Pioneer Square Labs Ventures, with Shasta’s Jacob Mullins taking a seat on BigBox VR’s board of directors. BigBox VR co-founders Chia Chin Lee and Gabe Brown say they’ve raised a total of $6.45 million in funding to date.

We haven’t tried POPULATION: ONE yet but the title is an ambitious one with what BigBox is calling “FreeMotion.”

“We love all the VR multiplayer games out there. Being both VR fans and developers gives us a chance to create a super polished game that takes in everything that we’ve learned so far. With our next game, we want to double down on the sense of freedom and social experience that only VR can deliver,” Chia Chin Lee wrote in an email. “POPULATION: ONE will be the first FreeMotion game. What this means is players can go anywhere in a giant map, climb anything they see, and fly into battle to surprise enemies. On top of this, players can build walls for quick cover in the middle of a firefight. Players can choose their own play-style within a large, open world.”

We have yet to climb a tree and build a tree house to snipe someone in POPULATION: ONE but that certainly sounds like an interesting mashup of features compared with some of the battle royale efforts we’ve seen. The company plans to release tools eventually so that users can create content and sell it in a marketplace, and Lee wrote “we have a clear roadmap for consistent content releases, events, and tournaments that will build a strong community.”

Smashbox Arena is currently available for around $20 while POPULATION: One is in private beta.

Last year Llamasoft, a developer known for its trippy arcade games, released Polybius on PlayStation VR (PSVR). The game is a sort of remake of an industry legend, an arcade cabinet that was so brutal in its display of neon-drenched shoot’em up action that it was removed from some places. Good news for PC VR users that like an acid trip, then; the game is coming to SteamVR later this year.

A Steam page for Polybius is now online, confirming a Q4 2018 release window (so, in other words, within the next few weeks) and listing Oculus Rift support. No, there’s no Vive support listed, though Minter reasoned on Twitter that the developer only has access to Oculus hardware. Still, given that it’s appearing on SteamVR, the game will likely run unofficially inside both Vive and the Windows VR headsets, and full gamepad support should mean there won’t be any control discrepancies, either.

The Steam page also says that a VR headset is required to run the game, though Minter confirmed this is not the case; you can play it on a standard screen too.

Polybius is a tunnel shooter in which the player controls a small vehicle that blasts down a neon assault course, shooting everything in sight. Earlier this year we labeled it as one of the 100 VR games you really should be playing, so it’s great to see it finally come to PC. That’s especially true considering Minter last April revealed that Llamasoft hadn’t yet ‘made a penny’ out of the game. Hopefully those fortunes will change with the latest release.

Want to know more about VR marble maze, Arca’s Path? Look no further than this new developer diary.

Members of developer Dream Reality Interactive are on hand to introduce you to the world of its first commercial VR game, in which you steer a ball through increasingly tricky levels using VR’s head-tracking functionality. The game doesn’t require a controller of any sort to play, you simply need to sit back, relax and enjoy the obstacle course ahead of you.

We’re looking forward to Arca’s Path; it seems well-positioned to be the type of game you show family members in your new VR headset this Christmas. Look for the game to launch on pretty much every headset under the sun (that’s Rift, Vive, PSVR, Windows VR, Go and Gear) on December 4th.

It looks like HTC and McLaren’s VR F1 collaboration will be arriving in the west pretty soon.

At the ChinaJoy event earlier this year HTC debuted a partnership with the motor company, putting visitors in the virtual driver seat of a McLaren F1 car. Attendees were able to compete for the fastest lap time in order to earn a spot in the finals of a competition taking place at the McLaren Technology Centre in the UK next January. The grand prize is a place on McLaren’s eSports team.

Why just be a spectator? Coming soon. @HTCVive pic.twitter.com/7PoEj2jH4N

— McLaren (@McLarenF1) November 8, 2018

Today, though, McLaren itself tweeted the above video of what looks to be that very experience, complete with the message ‘Why just be a spectator?’ and the promise that the experience is ‘coming soon’.

Naturally, we have questions. Will this experience be released on Viveport and/or Steam for everyone to get a shot at racing an F1 car, or will it be a location-based tournament? Will there be more to the app than a single track?

An Oculus patent application revealed a detailed look at what is likely Oculus Quest’s cooling system.

Standalone VR headsets generate significantly more heat than PC-based headsets because the CPU and GPU are within the headset, not inside in a PC. At Oculus Connect 5, Oculus confirmed that Quest uses “active cooling with a fan inside”.

At the launch of Oculus Go, the company’s lower end 3DoF standalone offering, founder Palmer Luckey posted a teardown image of the headset. It revealed that it had a heatpipe cooling system which uses the frontplate of the headset as a heatsink, taking heat away from the user’s face and spreading it over a large area.

Cooling is an often ignored aspect of a computing device that directly relates to performance more than one might assume. Go’s cooling system allows it to dissipate heat far better than a smartphone. This means that while it uses the same Snapdragon 821 SoC as a Galaxy S7, it actually has “significantly more performance”, because the S7 would reach its maximum temperature and have to reduce CPU & CPU speed (called “thermal throttling”), whereas the Go can sustain its speeds for as long as needed. Given that even passive cooling allowed the Go to be “significantly” faster, active cooling could elevate the Snapdragon 835 in the Quest and Focus further.

Oculus sees the primary purpose of Quest as gaming and expects it to compete with the Nintendo Switch, and active cooling may help make this possible.